“Stephen Jackson, how’s that leather taste in your mouth?”: Michael Jordan trash talked and schooled his former Charlotte player 7 years after retirement

Michael Jordan is a legend unto himself – a man whose tales seem stranger than fiction. One of those involves Stephen Jackson.

Stephen Jackson was one of the NBA’s most unlikely success stories during his time. He won championships with the San Antonio Spurs, but he’s also remembered for his time with other teams.

More infamously, he’s known as one of the primary aggressors during the Malice in the Palace brawl. However, those days are 17 years and an ESPN 30-for-30 documentary behind us. Though it changed the NBA forever, it ultimately does not define a distinguished veteran career.

Stephen Jackson was a pretty good scorer in the league during the mid-2000s. It was an era where role players and stars had much more similar shot profiles than today. And Jak was pretty good at utilizing his frame and his body fakes to score from the mid-range in bunches.

At his peak, Jackson averaged around 20 points per game – a neat return for a role player. However, he had one flaw common to a lot of up-and-coming sportspersons – he thinks entirely too much about himself.

This led to him once getting into a rather humbling experience courtesy of His Airness Michael Jordan himself.

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Michael Jordan trash-talked and schooled Stephen Jackson during his Hornets days

Stephen Jackson played for the Spurs and the Pacers before his famous spell on the We Believe Warriors. However, once that squad disbanded, he was traded by their front office to Michael Jordan’s Charlotte Bobcats.

The Bobcats were a mediocre team with no championship aspirations or players of such caliber. Stephen Jackson was their leading scorer during the 2009-10 and 10-11 seasons, averaging over 21 ppg the first year. However, he made the unforgivable mistake of taking on MJ.

Eduardo Najera was a long-time NBA veteran on the last legs of his career in 2010-11. He narrates the story as follows:

“Our team wasn’t pretty good, and I was a veteran trying to help the team practice. And Michael decided to jump in. And then he and Charles Oakley jumped on the same team as Gerald Wallace and a few others.”

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“Of course, with Stephen Jackson being Stephen Jackson, he started trash-talking. ‘That was the past and this is the future.'”

“MJ got furious & started trash-talking him, & not only that, he started killing him, telling him “How does the leather taste in your mouth” every time he hit a shot.”

Never trash-talk or challenge Michael Jordan, son. Never, ever.